2.6. fMRI Data Acquisition

Imaging was performed on a 3-Tesla TRIO-Magnetom Scanner (Siemens, Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany) using a standard 32-channel head-coil. For each data volume we acquired 48 continuous axial-slices in descending order with 2 × 2 mm in-plane resolution, 2 mm slice thickness, and a 1 mm gap using T2^∗-weighted parallel echoplanar imaging (TR = 2870 ms, TE = 25 ms, flip angle = 80°, and field of view = 208 × 208 mm) with GRAPPA acceleration (R = 2). Depending on the time spent on ratings subjects needed 13–18 min to complete the protocol. The number of functional scans acquired varied accordingly (275–374 volumes). The first 5 volumes were discarded to allow for T1-saturation. Following fMRI, we acquired a high-resolution T1-weighted structural brain scan using a standard MP-RAGE sequence (1 × 1 × 1 mm spatial resolution, TR = 2300 ms, TE = 2.98 ms, flip angle = 9°, and field of view = 256 × 256, 240 slices).